Trial set in Tewksbury cold-case murder

LOWELL -- The only man whose fate still hangs in the balance in connection with the cold-case murder of 15-year-old John McCabe 43 years ago is tentatively scheduled for trial later this month.

Walter Shelley, 61, of Tewksbury, has a status date Aug. 19, then is tentatively scheduled for trial on Aug. 27 or Sept. 3 on charges of first-degree murder and witness intimidation.

But before that, defense attorney Stephen Neyman has filed a bevy of motions, including asking for the identifications of a number of people referenced in police reports, a motion to produce polygraph results, and a motion to dismiss the charge of witness as "time-barred.''

Prosecutors have filed motions opposing several of those motions, which means a judge will have to decide.

Shelley and Michael Ferreira, 59, of Salem, N.H., were both charged with first-degree murder for the Sept. 26, 1969, murder of the Tewksbury teen.

Prosecutors allege that on the night of the murder, Ferreira, Shelley and Edward Allan Brown, all Tewksbury teens at the time, kidnapped McCabe as he walked home from a school dance at the Knights of Columbus in Tewksbury.

The three men are accused of tying a rope around McCabe's ankles, wrists and neck, putting tape over his eyes and mouth, then leaving him in a vacant field in Lowell to teach him a lesson for flirting with Shelley's girlfriend at the time, prosecutors allege.

When they returned about an hour later, McCabe was dead.

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The state Medical Examiner's Office ruled the boy died from asphyxiation by strangulation.

Brown, now 60, of Londonderry, N.H., cut a deal with prosecutors. In exchange for his testimony against Ferreira and Shelley, Brown will plead guilty to manslaughter and serve no jail time.

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